But here's a potential hitch, though it will be one only if Democrats allow it to be:
As Democrats clash over whether President Biden can win in November, Republicans are saying dropping his bid is not enough — that Biden is mentally unfit to run the country another six months.Vance added:
... Republicans are laying the groundwork to pressure him to resign from office.
"Everyone calling on Joe Biden to *stop running* without also calling on him to resign the presidency is engaged in an absurd level of cynicism," Trump's running mate Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) posted on Saturday.
If Joe Biden doesn't have the cognitive function to run for re-election, then he certainly doesn't have the cognitive function to remain as Commander-In-Chief.
— JD Vance (@JDVance1) July 19, 2024
How can any Dem pushing him to drop out of the presidential race, argue in good faith that he should stay on as POTUS?
This is being echoed by useful idiots such as Brian Stelter and the usually astute Daniel Drezner.
If Biden withdraws from the race, Democrats need to unite around the message that he is highly capable of serving as president for the next six months. And they should use this as an opportunity to call Republicans on their bad-faith arguments.
Earlier this month, I told you why Biden shouldn't resign: If Harris were to become president this year as well as the Democratic presidential candidate, she would need to choose not only a running mate (a choice that's entirely up to her and her party), but also a vice president to serve the last few months of the term. It could be the same person, but it doesn't have to be. Republicans will pounce on the replacement-VP choice as an opportunity to own Harris and the libs. They'll either refuse to approve her choice or hold star-chamber hearings, probably chaired by a sociopathic extremist like Jim Jordan, in which literally anyone she's chosen will be portrayed as worse for America than Osama bin Laden. Both houses of Congress need to approve the replacement VP. Every Republican in the GOP-controlled House will vote no, just to make Harris look weak, at a time when she's fighting to be a credible presidential candidate.
And then there'll be no vice president in the event Harris wins the presidential election, which means no vice president (acting as president of the Senate) to count the electoral votes on January 6, 2025. If it's a Democratic victory, it's likely to be a close one, and it will be fiercely disputed by the GOP. Who will act as president of the Senate if there's no VP? The new Senate will have been sworn in by then -- that happens on January 3, before the electoral vote count, and seventeen days before the president is inaugurated. If Republicans have the majority in the new Senate, they'll designate the president pro tem -- presumably the senior-most Republican, Chuck Grassley -- to preside. Will he ratify a Democratic victory that's being actively disputed by Republicans? Of course he won't.
That's why Biden shouldn't resign. Now, here's how Democrats should respond to arguments for his resignation.
They should insist that Biden has the physical capacity, the mental astuteness, and the moral judgment to be president for the remainder of his term. (They should absolutely refer to moral judgment -- why not use this as an opportunity to go on offense against Trump?) If they want to concede that Biden sometimes has difficulty summoning up words, they should say that nevertheless he's crystal clear on the issues he's dealing with.
They can argue that he recognizes that he might not have the energy to swerve as president and run for reelection, which are two full-time jobs, so he's making the job of president a priority. And they can argue that Vance, who's not even forty, has no understanding of the wisdom that comes from experience. Vance has never worked long enough to develop expertise at anything in his life -- he's gone from the military to law school to venture capital to a vague nonprofit to a career in politics, and now he thinks he can tell someone who's devoted decades to serving this country that he knows who has the ability to be president. Who does he think he is?
Democrats don't need to take my advice, but they should close ranks around Biden and insist that he has no reason to leave office. And they should remind the public of what Republicans did to Merrick Garland in 2016, and say that Republicans want the opportunity to do the same thing to Kamala Harris when she chooses a vice president to serve oyut the term. For once, Democrats should call Republicans act on their habitual bad faith. They should say that Republicans are certain to act in a nakedly politcal way because they'd rather deal Democrats a defeat than be civic-minded.
Democrats probably won't do this, of course. They don't play hardball this way. But I can dream.
No comments:
Post a Comment